


Goodbye to You

by mosylu



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, Grief, Jay is objectively the Worst, missing moments between the seasons, not Julian friendly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-06
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-05-02 21:57:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14554371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mosylu/pseuds/mosylu
Summary: Every time someone leaves, she has to put herself back together again. One way or another. Caitlin's goodbyes, starting after season 1.





	1. Ronnie

**Author's Note:**

> So I started this with a whole arc in mind. It was supposed to be “Five Times Caitlin Snow Said Goodbye (and one time she said hello).” And then the events of 4x20 jossed the whole second half.
> 
> But I was really proud of the writing I did in the first half, which is reactions and missing moments to pre-existing canon. So I’ve decided to post it as a series of one-shots, and I’ll just add to it when more goodbyes come along. I already have one in mind but I want to see how it plays out in canon first.

When her doorbell rang, Caitlin checked her watch. The movers weren’t supposed be here for another hour and a half. Were they early?

She finished labeling the last box and got to her feet, dusting off her knees.

The doorbell rang again.

“I’m coming,” she grumbled, “hold on.”

When she pulled the door open, Cisco’s finger was heading for the bell again. “Hey,” he said. “Did I wake you up or what?”

She stared at him. “It’s nine am,”  she said. “On a Wednesday. What are you doing here?”

“Can I come in?”

She stepped back, letting him through the door. “Of course, but - is everything okay?”

“No,” he said. “Everything’s not okay. You’re abandoning us.”

She dropped her head forward and sighed. “Cisco. I’m not abandoning you. I’m taking a job, that’s all.”

“A job,” he spat out. “Some nice nine-to-five gig with weekends off and a dental plan? We’re the ground team for a superhero, Caitlin. A superhero!”

“No. We aren’t,” she said. “He kicked us out last month. All of us. He put a padlock on the front gate.”

He scuffed his foot on her mat. “He’ll come around.”

“When? In another month? Six months? A year? I deserve better than to wait around for Barry Allen to decide he needs us again, and so do you. I’m taking the job so I’m not stuck here staring at the walls for God knows how long.”

He scowled. She knew he’d been bored and antsy, watching crime go down all over the city, watching the Flash rush out to handle it, and knowing that his chair at Star Labs was empty. She’d gotten the texts at two in the morning and the forwarded links at three in the afternoon.

Honestly, she’d felt the same way sometimes.

But she needed to move ahead with her life. Leave the tumult behind.

“I ran into Joe last week,” she said. “He said something about a position for you at CCPD?”

He shrugged. “Just beefing up their equipment. Meta-proofing it.”

“You should take it. You’d like that. How much does it pay?”

“Not like Star Labs, but - you know. Not bad for government work. I might get a badge,” he said, looking briefly cheerful at the thought.

“Take it,” she said.

“I - maybe.” He looked around her front room. “Hey,” he said. “Where are all your books? Your little statue thingies? That mad comfy quilt from your great aunt?”

“Packed,” she said, gesturing to the stack of boxes in the corner, half-hidden by the couch. “I’m moving.”

“Out of this house?”

“No, I’m just moving everything one room over. Yes, out of this house.”

“But you love this house!”

Tears rose up behind her eyes in a sudden tidal wave. “I did,” she said. “I really did.”

“Oh,” he mumbled and pulled her into his arms. “Caitlin. I’m sorry. You bought this place with Ronnie, didn’t you?”

She nodded, pressing her face into his hair, breathing in the familiar smell of his shampoo. “Yes,” she said. “Both our names on the mortgage and everything. It was - our life. Our life together.” She sniffed, once, hard. “But he’s gone.”

“You thought that before,” he said against her ear. “And he came back.”

“It was a miracle,” she said. “Which is why I can’t expect that twice.”

She’d left the Kleenex boxes all over the house for last, knowing that the process of packing and moving was going to be horrendous. She pulled out of Cisco’s embrace and found one, wiping her eyes and blowing her nose.

When she’d tossed the used tissue into a plastic bag hanging from the doorknob, she turned to face Cisco. “I can’t stay here,” she said levelly. “Not anymore. I’ve lived in the rubble of the life I was supposed to have for the past eighteen months. I need to build something new. Can you understand that?”

“I guess,” he said. “Yeah. I’m just - this is fast, Caitlin. It takes you ten minutes to decide on what flavor of scone you want at Jitters. You really bought a new house that fast?”

“I didn’t buy anything,” she said. “I signed a lease on an apartment. It’s nice. Closer to the city center. Lots of amenities in the building.”

“And this place?”

“It’s on the market. I have an agent. There’s a staging company that’ll bring in furniture so it’s not empty when people look at it.” It would probably take forever to sell in this market, she thought. But she had enough in savings that she could handle rent and mortgage together for maybe three months. After that, she’d have to see.

“All worked out, huh?”

She nodded.

He looked around again. “You thought about this,” he said. “Before, I mean.”

She looked at the floor. “Before Ronnie … returned, ” she said softly, “I was considering moving, and I did some research.  I pulled the folder out last week and looked at my options.”

“And got this all done,” he said. “Just like that.”

She shrugged. “What else am I doing with my days?”

He made an ironic little salute and didn’t say anything.

She looked at her watch. “The movers will be here in forty-five minutes,” she said. “I should do a walk-through. Just one last check.” Her voice shook.

“Hey,” he said. “You want me to do it? You should hang out in here. Have a good cry or something.”

She shook her head. “I think I need to,” she said. She hesitated. She shouldn’t ask this. Not with the other thing she needed to say to him. But he was here, and he wanted to help, and it felt too big to even approach alone. “Come with me?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

They walked through each room, opening cabinets, checking under furniture, gathering up Kleenex boxes and half-full trash bags. She found a few things - an earring she’d given up for lost in the bedroom, an unopened, expired bottle of ibuprofen under the bathroom sink. Cisco took the half-empty roll of toilet paper from the holder. “Trust,” he said, waggling it. “You’re gonna want this in your new place tonight.”

Some rooms were easier than others. The kitchen and her study and the bedroom - she used them every day, and while there was a little pang at the emptiness and the stacks of boxes, it subsided easily.

But the basement was horrible. Ronnie’s man-corner, with its TV and beer-fridge and terrible disintegrating bachelor couch, had been packed up and carted away to Goodwill months ago. The indents had mostly disappeared from the carpet, but their very absence mocked her. Gone, gone, gone. She gritted her teeth, did a quick sweep around the empty walls and under the stairs, and then ran back up to the first floor.

The guest room almost broke her.

“Hey,” Cisco said, rubbing her back. “Hey. Okay. Breathe? Breathe.”

She sat on the stripped bed, sobbing. He held a box of tissues for her. “Got that out?” he said when her sobs had slowed.

She nodded, tugging a Kleenex out of the box. “This,” she said, and choked briefly. When she could speak again, she told him, “This was supposed to be the nursery.”

His face went slack with shock. “Shit, Caitlin, you weren’t - ”

“No,” she said. “Never. But Ronnie always said - ” She waved her hand around. “That this would be the perfect nursery. The size and the proximity to our bedroom and the - the way the light falls through the windows.” She sobbed again, pushing the Kleenex against her lips.

He rubbed her back until the sobs stopped slamming against her diaphragm and yanking themselves out of her throat, and softened into the occasional hiccup.

“I never knew you wanted kids,” he said when she’d wiped her face and blown her nose. “I mean, you’re not really a kid person.”

“No, I’m not really, and I was always on the fence about having them.” She wiped her face again. “But Ronnie wanted them, a lot. I told him we could talk about it after the - after the accelerator was online.”

He hugged her around the shoulders and let her cry the last few tears. She sat looking at the blank wall, feeling the teary headache beat in her temples, and swallowed.

She still wasn’t sure if she would have wanted children. But the choice to have them - or at least, to have Ronnie’s children - had been taken out of her hands, forever. Like so many other things, she had to let that go.

She pushed herself up from the bed. Caught off guard, Cisco sat blinking at her for a moment before he followed her out the door and to the kitchen. She set the canvas bag full of odds and ends and half-full Kleenex boxes down on the table. She would pack it in the car in a little bit.

He handed her another tissue and said very delicately, “Hey, so, you two got to spend, um - a few nights together after he returned. Is there any chance at all - ”

She shook her head. She’d gotten her period last week.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I’m not,” she said. “A little, maybe. But it’s better this way. I’m not in any shape to be someone’s mother. I need to put myself back together first.”

“Any way I can help with that, I’m on it. You just let me know.”

She swallowed. She had to say it. She’d drafted a text to him four or five times in the past few days and erased them all. It felt too cold to say over text. It was almost too cold to say to his face.

“Cisco, you’ve been a really good friend to me over the past year and a half. And that has meant so much to me. It really has.”

He grinned nervously. “Caitlin, are you breaking up with me or something?”

“I think what I need most right now, with this move, is some space.”

His face went slack. “Space.”

“Just some time to myself. To start that whole rebuilding thing on my own. A few weeks. Maybe a month.”

“Space from - from me?”

“Not you, specifically. Just from everything about Star Labs.”

“You mean, everything about Ronnie.”

“Okay,” she said. “Okay. Yes. I do mean that.”

“You want to forget him.”

“No, I want to finally move on. Cisco, I’ve kept everything the same since he died the first time. Same house, same job, same routine, same everything. The only thing that’s missing is Ronnie, and my life is nothing but the hole he left. I can’t live like that. Weren’t you the one who told me that in order to move on, I actually had to move on?”

“I didn’t mean from me!”

She tore the Kleenex into little pieces. Silence fell heavy around them.

“Wow,” he said finally.

She pressed her lips together.

“So this is why I had to actually come over here to find out you were moving? Like if I’d waited until this afternoon, you’d’ve been gone. Would you even have bothered giving me your new address?”

“Of course I would’ve,” she said.

“When? A few weeks? A month?”

He was taking it badly. Had there ever been a chance he would take this well? That he wouldn’t be hurt and upset?

“Okay. I get it.“ He crossed his arms. "I get the plan here. You’re just going to wrap everything about the last few years up in a ball and throw it in the garbage.”

“You’re overreacting.” Wrong thing to say, but she couldn’t think of anything that would be right.

“No,” he said, pointing at her. “You don’t get to tell me I’m overreacting when you’re performing a slash-and-burn on anything and anybody that ever reminded you of Ronnie.”

“This isn’t forever!”

“You know, you got all high and mighty earlier about why should you wait around for Barry Allen to decide he needs us again. Well, why the hell should I wait around for you to decide the same?”

She stared at him, stony-faced. “I don’t know,” she said. “Why should you?”

His jaw clenched. He spun on his heel and stormed out.

She cried some more, sitting at her empty kitchen table. Not for Ronnie this time, but for Cisco.

He’d been through all the same things she had, she knew, if not quite in the same way. He needed support and comfort, too. But she wasn’t sure she could give it. She wasn’t sure she would give anything to anybody. She felt hollowed out. An inflated doll. One little pinprick and she would collapse.

He could hold a grudge powerfully, she knew. He’d soften up one day, probably. Just like she knew that she would start to miss him soon.

But not right now. Right now, he reminded her of late nights at Star Labs with Ronnie, laughing together over take-out. Movie nights at his place, Ronnie and Cisco squabbling over the finer points of comic-book movies. Cisco pulling Ronnie into his arms when he’d come back, Cisco handing Ronnie the ring at their wedding, Cisco driving her home as she sobbed herself almost to vomiting after the singularity, when she’d lost Ronnie for good.

He’d given her so much, and she had nothing in her to give back.

One day those memories would settle into place and she could see him without a pit of agony opening up in her stomach. She wanted that. She looked forward to it.

One day, maybe he’d turn up on her doorstep, or at Mercury Labs. He’d probably have some excuse all ready to go - _this crazy thing happened and you’re the only one who can figure it out, help us Obi-Wan Caitlin!_ \- and she would put up a show of resistance. But they’d both know the truth.

What would she do if he didn’t?

 _Go on_ , she thought. Just like she was going on without Ronnie.

When she’d cried herself dry, she threw away all the tissues, and then the empty Kleenex box, and tied the plastic bag closed. She splashed cold water from the kitchen tap on her face, and breathed in and out while it dripped from her chin.

 _You’re starting over,_ she told herself. _It’s going to hurt. Acknowledge that. Keep walking._

The doorbell rang. Through the kitchen window, she could see a big truck settling onto its wheels, out on the street. This time it was the movers.

She went to answer the door.


	2. Jay

She’d driven to Joe’s for their post Big-Bad celebratory dinner. On the way back to Cisco’s apartment, she saw a grocery store coming up on their right. “Hey,” she said. “Do you mind if we stop? I need some things.”

“No problem,” he said, and she turned in. “What do you need?”

“Lighter fluid and matches.”

“Planning a barbecue?”

She pulled her keys out of the ignition. “Jay left some things at my place,” she said slowly and carefully. “They’ve been in a box in my hall closet. But I want them out. Gone.”

“So,” he said. “Barbecue.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Okay,” he said. “Lighter fluid and matches it is. May I also suggest vodka and ice cream?”

“Yes,” she said. “You may.”

* * *

Cisco refused to be left out of the Jay Roast, as he called it, so they went to her place instead. They stopped briefly in her apartment to retrieve the items for immolation before heading down to the pool area, with its communal grills. The box held some clothes, a pair of shoes, a toothbrush, a hairbrush, and a paperback book he’d picked out when she’d taken him to her favorite bookstore.

“Ayn Rand,” Cisco said, holding it up for her to take. “Oh my god. How did this not clue us in he was evil?”

“I thought he was so intellectual and open-minded, reading Earth-1 authors,” she said grimly, and threw it into the barbecue pit so hard that charcoal scattered like grapeshot.

“Dickhead.” Cisco started to put the shoes in the pit.

She put out her hand to block that. “Ugh, no, please let’s not die of plastic fumes,” and tossed it in the big metal garbage can. The toothbrush and the hairbrush followed - they were also plastic - but she piled all his clothes on top of the book.

Cisco held up the lighter fluid. “You wanna do the honors?”

“Go ahead. I’ll light the match.”

“Damn straight you will.“

When everything was well-soaked in lighter fluid, she struck a match and held it over the remains of Jay Garrick. Jay, who’d never been what he said he was. Jay, who was supposed to be part of her healing. Jay, who’d sucked her so completely into his concerns and his needs that she lost sight of her own.

Jay, who’d kidnapped her, who’d hurt her, who’d used her, who’d had the gall - the fucking _gall_ \- to say that he loved her and expect her to still love him back. After all that.

She dropped the match.

It didn’t quite go up in a fireball, but the clothes caught quickly and the flames bloomed, spilling out heat that washed over them. She soaked in the destruction, remembering the way that Jay/Hunter/Zoom had screamed as he was dragged into the speedforce.

It was almost enough to satisfy her.

Cisco bumped shoulders with her. "Feel better now?”

“I just feel so stupid,” she whispered.

He hugged her from behind, hooking his chin on her shoulder. “Don’t. He fooled all of us.”

“I thought I entered the relationship with my eyes open,” she said. “I thought I knew how it would go. We would enjoy each other while he was here, and then we’d defeat Zoom and he’d go back to Earth-2, and that would be that.”

Cisco was quiet, and she turned to look at him.

“You,” he said. “You really - I mean, that was your thought process?”

“What did you think? I was planning to go back to Earth-2 with him? Leave all of you behind forever for a man I barely knew?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I thought maybe you just went - phoomp. Head over heels for his hot bod.” At her expression, he said, “Come on, he was objectively smokin’ even if he was pure evil. Like a shiny red apple that’s all rotted out on the inside.”

“I did fall head over heels, sort of. But I allowed myself to. It was like a summer-camp romance. It came with an expiration date.” She sniffed and leaned over to dig a tissue pack out of her purse. “Really, sometimes I think it wasn’t even about him. I’d spent the months since the singularity putting myself back together, and a nice, simple romance was the last piece. Just a little bit of exercise for my heart. To reassure myself it still worked.” She shut her eyes. “I should have left it in its box.”

“I’m going to sound like a bad greeting card for a minute here, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Your heart works,” he said. “I know that because you came back to Star Labs. Even before that, when you sent me a cupcake on my birthday even though we hadn’t talked for three months.”

“That was supposed to be anonymous.”

“Red velvet from Cameron’s? Like you’d gotten me the year before and you got me this year? Girl, you ain’t subtle.”

She elbowed him.

“But my point is, I always knew your heart worked, even before you opened it up to Jay. Just because he was a rat-faced lying liar, it doesn’t mean anything’s wrong with you. Don’t let this stop you, okay? Date if you wanna. Fall in love if you wanna. If you don’t because of him, he wins.”

“What if I pick the wrong man again?”

“It’s a risk,” he acknowledged. “But love always is.”

She knew he was thinking of Kendra, and reached down to take his hand.

He held hers for a moment, squeezed once, and let it go. "And now, let us ingest way more calories and alcohol than is good for us.”

“Yes, please,” she said, and dragged a couple of patio chairs over so they could watch the flames.

But when he pulled the vodka out of the bag, she recoiled. They’d split up at the grocery store and she hadn’t seen what he’d bought. It was whipped-cream vodka in a blue bottle.

Cisco looked discomfited. “I thought you liked this stuff.”

“I did,” she said. “So did Jay.”

They’d gotten giggly-drunk on it one night, here, at her apartment. She’d kissed him, and he’d kissed her back, but when she’d gone to pull off her shirt, he’d pulled it back down again and told her that it wouldn’t be fair to go further because they weren’t sober.

She’d woken up the next morning, gone to the guest room, dropped her robe, and said to his smiling face, “What do you think, are we sober enough now?”

He’d done things like that, was the thing. He’d ticked all her boxes - kind, thoughtful, intelligent, scientific, and very handsome. If she’d sat down and drawn a picture of her ideal man, it would have come out looking like Jay.

And it had all been an act. As if Hunter had found that mental picture somehow and tailored his Jay-mask to be exactly what she wanted.

Why had it never occurred to her that a speedster wouldn’t need to stay in her guest room because he wouldn’t be drunk in the first place?

“I can run down to the place on the corner,” Cisco said, still looking at the vodka bottle in consternation. “Go get something different.”

“No, you drink it. I’m more in an ice cream mood anyway.”

He passed the tub over. “All yours.”

“Oh, Moose Tracks!”

“Good pick?”

“Excellent pick.” She took the top off and scraped her spoon across the softening top, sticking it in her mouth. “Mmm.”

He opened the vodka and held up the bottle. “To HunterJay - JayHunter - hey, Cait, what are we calling him?”

“Nothing,” she said grimly, watching a page from the book flutter in a brief updraft. It settled back onto the coals and blackened into ash. “After these burn, I’m never saying his name again. Any of them.”

“Word,” Cisco said. “He wanted to be the greatest? Let his name be as dust. It’s all he deserves.”

“Hear, hear,” she said.

He held out the bottle and she clinked it with her ice cream spoon.

She ate, and he drank, and they talked shit about Jay - “those _jokes,_ ” Cisco said. “Oh, we don’t have shoelaces on my earth, tell me about them, haha, gotchu again! Soooooo funny.”

“Sooooo funny,” she growled. “And he never seemed to be around unless he needed something, did you ever notice that?”

“Fuck yeah, I did. What the hell? Where did we think he was going all that time?”

“He said he was exploring this Earth.” Caitlin felt herself boiling over and stabbed the ice cream. “I pictured him going to museums and libraries and - ugh. Ugh. So stupid.”

“Fuck him right in his stupid face,” Cisco said.

By the time the fire had burned low, she felt queasy from sugar and fat, and he was sprawled back against the lawn chair, a little giggly. “Cai'lin,” he said. “I’m not turnt, ‘zackly, but I think I'mma need your guest room.”

“It’s all yours,” she said. “Make yourself at home. Are you going to want any of this?” She held out the half-eaten ice cream.

“Mmm, nah, you finish it.”

She couldn’t, so she took it to the trash bin. Then, because she was up, she said, “Maybe I’d better clean out that trash so the next person grilling doesn’t get dirty-clothes flavor on their steaks.”

“Smart,” Cisco said. “Don’t let him ruin anybody else’s day.” He was screwing the cap back on the vodka, brow furrowed in concentration.

“Not one more person,” she said, getting water from the pool to splash onto the smoldering coals. The last of the fire expired with a hiss and a gush of steam. When it was wet and dead, she used the barbecue tongs to pull out the charred book, the scraps of t-shirt, the scorched shreds of pants, and tossed them into the garbage.

Cisco turned his head at the buzz of his phone, amplified by the metal patio table it sat on. “That better not be mayhem,” he said. “I’m a little too drunk for that.” But he reached for it anyway.

She poked around for anything she’d missed, then swept her hands over the coals themselves to test their temperature.

Abruptly, something twisted in her stomach. Something hungry. Her fingers burned with cold, as if she’d forgotten her gloves in January or stuck her hand in a freezer. Then heat rushed through her fingertips, up her arm, and she jerked it back, gasping.

The coals were all coated with ash.

No - not ash.

“Caitlin,” Cisco croaked, and she spun, the guilty hand clutched to her stomach. Had he seen that? What had happened for him to see?

But he was looking at his phone, not her hand, and he looked twenty years older than he had just a minute before.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Dante,” he said. “Accident. He was - accident.”

She grabbed her purse and dug out her keys. “Which hospital?”

“Mercy General.”

She hooked her purse over her shoulder and took his hand, pulling him out of the courtyard. “We’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” she said, and then considered traffic at this time of night. “Ten.”

As she screeched out of the underground parking garage and revved through a yellow light, with Cisco on the phone in the passenger seat, she told herself, _That was ash on the coals._

_Not frost._

_Of course not._


	3. Julian

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I meant to post this a few days ago, but then I watched episode 4x21 and a one-off line totally contradicted how I’d finished up this one-shot. Sheesh. I took a few days to re-write and here it is.

The bar’s background music thumped in her ears, a constant grinding of bass and drums and men who didn’t know what they were doing with either. Somebody wanted a Natty Light, someone else wanted a vodka shot, a third man wanted to put his hand on her ass.

Caitlin tuned out the music, filled the drink orders, and sidestepped the hand.

From a certain point of view, this wasn’t that different from medicine. Cut out distractions, focus on what needed to be done, be aware of potential issues.

So she was serving shitty drinks to shitty men, with shitty music in her ears, rather than being a part of a team that was saving and protecting the city on a daily basis. At least she wasn’t in the grips of an ice cold mania, trying to kill her friends and destroy her life.

So.

There was that.

The trick was not to care. Dr. Caitlin Snow of Star Labs had cared too much. She had boiled with pain and anger, compressed into a continual knot in her stomach, except for occasionally when it had lashed out in a flare of cold, until the day it had consumed her.

Caitlin Snow, waitress at the Wildcat Saloon, didn’t care about anything. She served drinks, she went home, she slept. She didn’t call her friends or look them up in the papers, even when they saved the city again. She didn’t allow herself to be proud of them, because that would lead to missing them, and that would lead her back to Star Labs and having friends who could be hurt.

Yes.

It was better this way.

At a recently abandoned table, she shifted the pint glasses, the soggy napkins, and the half-full food basket into a battered grey plastic bin. The smell of warm beer and cold onion rings coated the back of her throat. She ignored it, wiping the table down and putting the bar menus back into place in their holder.

“Caitlin!”

She went still, the bar towel in one hand and the busing bin under her other arm. It might even be accurate to say that she froze.

Ha. Ha.

The voice came again, all crisp British consonants and tight vowels, but more tentative this time. “Caitlin?”

She turned. “Julian.”

He stood a few feet away, looking stunned. “I thought that was you.”

She couldn’t help it. Her eyes flickered around the bar, cataloguing the faces, looking for ones that had been familiar before May. When Julian’s proved to be the only one, she told herself she was relieved.

“What are you doing here?” _Did Cisco send you? Did he vibe me?_

Julian laughed a little, self consciously, and tugged at his tie to straighten it. He was getting funny looks from the regulars, most of whom hadn’t worn a tie since their last arraignment. “Would you believe coincidence?”

She thought about that. In the context of her life over the last year? “Yes,” she said.

“I was just walking around,” he said. “And I thought I might like a drink. This was the closest one.” He looked around as if Google Maps had personally betrayed him.

“Okay,” she said, and moved on to the next table.

He blinked at her movements. “What are you doing in a place like this? And what are you _wearing?”  
_

All at once, she was hideously aware of her tight, ripped jeans, her low-cut tank top with her black bra a contrast underneath. _Show some skin_ , the owner had told her. _Flash your scanties. The boys are paying for that too.  
_

She’d told herself that her skin wasn’t for sale. But it had taken her barely a week of miserable tips before she’d bought new clothes.

Julian said, “Are you some kind of a barmaid?”

She straightened up and looked at him.

His eyes widened. “Not that - in the UK, it’s a perfectly respectable - um.”

She couldn’t believe she’d once found his unintentional offensiveness sort of endearing. A little bit cute. Why couldn’t he _think_ for a split second before opening his mouth? Why was it everyone else’s job to point out to him what it was he’d said?

Why had ever it been hers?

She pushed the anger back down and said evenly, “Yes. I work here. Are you going to order?”

He cleared his throat. “Can anyone here do a decent gin and tonic?”

Even before Killer Frost had started rising up in her, Caitlin wouldn’t have let that go by without a fight. _Well, it sounds like a really complicated recipe, but if I sound out the words, I shouldn’t poison you._ But she bit them back. Being sarcastic was too much like caring. “G&T, coming up,” she said and strode back to the bar.

As he had explained to her at great length, the first time they’d gone out for a drink, G&Ts were all about proper ingredients. She used the gin from the top shelf, a lemon tonic water, and spritzed the lime wedge just once over the surface of the drink before running it around the rim of the glass and then dropping it into the liquid before adding a stir stick.

When she turned around, Julian had taken up a seat at the bar. Without comment, she laid down a bar napkin and set the drink on it. He took a sip. “Oh,” he said, sounding surprised. “That’s quite good, actually.”

“It’s on the house,” she said.

“Caitlin, no, I couldn’t possibly,” he said. “I mean, it comes out of your tips or something, doesn’t it?”

In fact, it did, but if she started up a tab, she’d have to close it out later. Plus, if he used a card, she’d have to perform the whole rigamarole of getting his signature, and she didn’t want to have to talk to him any more than absolutely necessary. “It’s on the house, I said.” She turned away to take an order for french fries and refill a pitcher.

When she’d finished that, he’d moved a couple of seats down the bar. “Caitlin. Can we talk?”

“I’m working,” she said, gathering up empty glasses and dumping them in the bin to take back to the dishwasher later.

“You can still work, I just want to talk.”

She weighed her options. He was the customer and she was the employee, and in this place, the bouncers wouldn’t stir their stumps unless Julian actually tried to rip her clothes off. Maybe not even then. Easier to just let him talk at her. She could always ignore him.

“Fine,” she said. “Talk.” She picked up a big plastic canister of bar mix and started refilling the bowls scattered across the bar.

He stirred his drink, clinking the ice against the glass. “I’m leaving Central City,” he said. “Tomorrow. My flight leaves at nine.”

“Okay.”

“I’m going to back to England.”

She scowled at a bowl, trying to work out if the pretzel sticks left in the bottom had all been licked or not. They looked worryingly saltless. She dumped it out just to be safe and then refilled the bowl.

“Not just for a visit. I’m moving back home.”

She capped the bar mix and stowed it, then picked up her clipboard to double-check the bottle count.

“For good,” he added.

“Yes, I got that from ‘I’m moving back home,’” she said, twisting a bottle to the front to check the label.

He stared at the side of her head. She sensed it but didn’t look around. That would only encourage him.

She looked down the bar and saw a finger flicking up in the universal signal for another. She walked down the bar and looked into the grizzled face hanging over the empty pint glass. She tallied up the number of beers she’d already pulled for him tonight, and how long it took for him to focus on her.  "No,“ she said.

"I said gimme another,” he growled.

“And I said no.”

He lifted his head, staring at her resentfully. Danny was a quiet and peaceable almost-drunk, but a loud and aggressive drunk, and the line between the two could be razor-thin. The first time she’d misjudged his inebriation, he’d broken two stools and countless glassware, all of which came out of her paycheck because she should have cut him off.

Without taking her eyes off his, she reached out for a clean glass and filled it with water from the soda gun. Whisking a bar napkin into place next to his drained pint glass, she set the water down and kept her hand wrapped around it. “You need some ice in that?”

His eyes dropped. “No.”

The second time she’d misjudged his inebriation, she’d thought of her measly paycheck, pared down to double digits by the destruction, and frozen his water solid.

They understood each other now.

She turned away to the register and rang up his tab, sliding the receipt across the bar to him. He slapped down exactly enough to cover his drinks and no more. No tip. He did that sometimes when she cut him off, just to show her who was boss.

He sneered at her, daring her to get angry.

“Drink your water and call a cab,” she said, and walked away.

When she got back down to Julian’s end of the bar, he said, “I was worried that I might have to step in for a moment there.”

Was she supposed to be impressed by his implication that he would have handled a petty old drunk twice his age? “I was fine,” she said.

He stirred his drink a little more. “I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m leaving.”

“Not really,” she said, picking the clipboard up again.

“It was just that after all the things that happened - well, I really think I have to leave the area of meta studies. It’s very different, you know. Studying them in a CSI context, to encountering them in the flesh on a daily basis.”

“Is it,” she said. “Really.”

“Oh, yes, really different. And I do feel bad leaving all the others in the lurch. I mean, it hasn’t been that long since Barry left, and now me, too, I - ”

She whipped around. “What?”

“I was saying, it’s going to be more difficult for them now that - “

"You said something about Barry leaving.”

“Oh,” he said. “Yes. I’d forgot that wasn’t really public knowledge. Yes, Barry’s gone. He went into the Speedforce. Something about balance - I’m not really sure to tell you the truth -”

“When?”

“The night of H.R’s funeral.”

A memory speared through her - sitting in her darkened apartment, watching the vivid spikes of lightning over the city, wondering if she went up to the roof and let one of them hit her, whether it might take away her powers or kill her or give her some even more toxic gift.

It had been speed lightning, she’d known that even then. When it had died off, she’d assumed Barry and Wally had taken care of whatever it was.

Apparently, she’d been right.

“That was a month ago,” she said.

“Yes, well, it’s been difficult. But Vibe and Kid Flash have been keeping up, with my support back at Star Labs. And Iris’s, of course,” he added, like an afterthought.

Iris. God. They were engaged. She must be a wreck.

Caitlin bit down hard on her tongue. Hers was the last face Iris would want to see right now. Savitar had at least had Barry’s face to coax forth forgiveness, deserved or not. If Iris saw her right now, she’d probably shoot her, and Caitlin might let her.

She wiped down the bar, her brain churning. Why hadn’t Cisco come to let her know? But she’d told him to let her go, and he hadn’t tried to talk her into staying.

Was he staying away because she’d asked him to, or because he didn’t care enough to come?

Her fingers ached with cold.

Julian was still rambling. “I worry about them, of course, but I have to think of what’s best in the long run, and truly, I don’t think I’m suited for - ”

She picked up the bin and took it to the back. It wasn’t even half-full, but it was quiet and she needed the moment. She loaded the dishwasher slowly and carefully. The grill cook, Amber, sat on the counter, smoking and texting.

She thought about health codes and decided it wasn’t her business. Not like anybody in this place would notice if the burger buns smelled like cigarettes.

She shut the dishwasher and turned it on, then just stood for a moment with her hand on the grimy face of the appliance, breathing deeply. _I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care._

She was a liar.

She locked all the caring into a box and pushed it deep down. When she was sure it was far enough that the cold couldn’t lash out, she went back out front, hoping Julian might have left.

He hadn’t. His drink was three-quarters drained, the ice melting. She wondered if he was going to ask for another and sent not-thirsty thought waves at him. If only she’d gotten those powers instead of acquiring an evil alter ego that made no damn sense.

“Caitlin,” he said. “There you are. You know, I’m really glad I ran into you.”

She picked up a towel and started wiping down the bar again, avoiding his eyes.

“I mean, it seems like fate, doesn’t it?”

Wipe, wipe, wipe.

“I mean - we never really got the chance to see where our relationship might have gone.”

“Yes,” she said. “That whole thing where I turned into an evil version of myself really put the kibosh on romance, didn’t it?”

It had slipped out, but he took it as encouragement. “Yes. Regrettable. I wish things had been different.”

She didn’t respond to that.

“I can leave you my personal email,” he offered. “We could reconnect over text, perhaps. An epistolary romance. I’d like that.”

“I wouldn’t,” she said, and flipped the bar towel over her shoulder.

He stared at her. She stared back, willing him to just go already. Leave the bar, leave Central City, leave the country.

“Was there ever a chance?” he said, sounding uncertain for the first time. “You and I?”

“What’s the point in talking about it?” she said. “Things have changed. Goodbye, Julian. Have a good flight.”

When he made a move for his wallet, she said, “I told you, it’s on the house. I don’t want your money.” She ducked around the edge of the bar and went to the table that was flagging her down.

When she came back, he was gone. She nodded to herself and picked up the glass to dump the dregs. Underneath the glass, sticking to it as she lifted it up, was a ten-dollar bill.

She saw red.

And then she saw blue.

* * *

Julian must have just left, because he’d barely reached the corner when she hurled the block of ice. It smashed against the wall just over his shoulder.

He lurched in shock and spun around. “Caitlin? What - ”

“Did you not understand the meaning of _on the house_? Did you not hear me?”

“Of course I heard you,” he said.

“But you didn’t listen,” she said. “You never _listen._ ”

“I didn’t feel right, not - ”

“I didn’t ask how you felt. I told you I didn’t want it.” She stabbed a finger at the pavement. “Pick it up.”

“What?”

“Pick up the fucking bill,” she snarled.

He looked at the pavement and saw the ten-dollar bill that had been frozen inside the chunk of ice. He reached out with shaking hands and lifted it up, watching pebbles of ice slide off it and chilly water drip from the corners.

She watched him, hard-faced. “Take out your wallet. Put it away. Never let me see it again.”

He followed orders, looking baffled. “Why are you being so rude? I was trying to be nice.”

“You know something you never asked me? All that talk about yourself and you never asked me, 'how are you doing, Caitlin? I see your hair’s back to normal, Caitlin. How’s it going, controlling the evil, murderous, batshit crazy other identity, _Caitlin_?’” She held up a hand. “No, I know, those are really hard things to think about, because they’re not about you. How about an easy one? 'Caitlin, do you even want to talk to me tonight?’”

His face pinched up. “If you didn’t want to talk, you should have been more clear.”

“More clear,” she said. “I guess you’re right. I should have been crystal clear. Almost as clear as I was when I said, 'Don’t take the necklace off, because I would rather die than be Killer Frost.’”

His jaw set.

“Sound familiar?” she snarled.

“You should be grateful,” he said. “I saved your life.”

“That _wasn’t._ YOUR. _DECISION!”_

She felt the mist swirling around her hands, felt the cold spear up her spine, crawl over her scalp, boil behind her eyes, the way it had on that hospital bed, when she’d recovered consciousness and known what he’d done.

A drawling voice echoed in her head. _Go on, little Caity. Keep going. Let all that yummy rage out. Give me something to finally fucking work with!_

She slammed her jaw shut, closed her eyes, clenched her fists. “No,” she said.

Julian said, “I don’t - ”

Eyes still shut, she hissed, “I wasn’t talking to _you.”_

She caught the rage boiling in her stomach and wrapped it up tight, knotted it, pressed it down, until Killer Frost’s voice had faded into nothing. She opened her eyes again when she was sure they were brown.

“Let me be clear,” she said, laying each word down between them like a live grenade. “All the things that she did, those are my responsibility.”

And how she was going to begin to atone, she had no idea.

“But the fact that she got loose - I blame you. And I always will.”

His voice shook. “I couldn’t bear to see you die.“

_"Then you should have closed your eyes.”_

He put his hand out. “Caitlin. You’re in a bad place. Let me help you. There’s something between us, we - ”

In a flat, dead voice, she said, “I asked you out for a drink because you liked me, and you were a little nicer than my last boyfriend, and all the rules say I have to give you a chance.“

His face softened. "Yes,” he said. “You felt it too. You - ”

“I never said I felt anything,“ she told him.

"But - ”

“Oh, I would have tried. We might even have dated for a few months, until I got tired of trying to make feelings out of nothing. Killer Frost just speeded that process up. Don’t fool yourself, Julian. The only thing between us was your own invention.”

His face hardened. “You’ve gotten very cold, Caitlin,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “And whose fault is that?“

He looked at her as if he were seeing her for the first time, and he didn’t like what he saw. His eyes fell to her hands, and widened.

She looked down and saw the mist swirling around them, rising in wisps. She should have been horrified. Panicking. She should have tried to pack it all back down again.

She smiled and lifted her hands.

He ran.

When he’d disappeared into the distance, she dropped her hands and shut her eyes.

She’d been doing so well, this past month. Completely in control. Only letting the cold slip out when she wanted it to. She’d even been thinking she might be able to go back to Star Labs soon.

Silly Caitlin. Arrogant Caitlin. Oh, no, no, Killer Frost wasn’t a problem as long as she made sure not to feel anything.

The problem was, she had too many feelings and always had.

She'd fought Killer Frost back tonight, but it would have been so easy to step back and let her take over. Her bitter-cold evil self might genuinely have killed Julian, and for what? The crime of being self-involved? Of convincing himself that she was ready to pick up the costume of Love Interest as if that was all she was waiting for in life? The crime of seeing the world only as he wanted to see it?

If that was worth a frosty death, than she’d have to kill almost every man she knew.

_Fine by me_ , Frost said.

"Stop,” she snarled, clenching her fists until they stopped misting. “Just. Stop.”

Frost’s voice faded into silence.

Caitlin looked over to her left, toward the spot on the river where she could just see the tip of one of the towers of Star Labs. The broken one, like a chipped tooth. She usually didn’t look at it, but right now it called to her, a siren song of _You need them, and maybe they could need you too._

But they hadn’t been able to fix her, and they’d almost paid a terrible price for trying. Nobody needed that.

She turned her back on Star Labs and returned to the Wildcat Saloon. Amber, behind the bar, gave her a dirty look for taking off. She ignored it and picked up a bin, collecting glasses and trash from the tables.

At a table near the window, a particularly grungy regular sprawled back in his chair and leered at her. She cleared empty glasses and soggy beer mats off the next table over, and pointedly ignored him.

“So,” he said softly. “Prissy missy can do more than ice water.”

Her stomach lurched, and there was a pressure in the hollow of her throat, like a finger pressing, pressing - “What?” she said.

He flicked a hand at the window. “Caught the show,” he said. “Bad breakup?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Are you done with your drink?”

He tilted the glass up, shaking the last of the beer down his throat before setting it down just beyond her arm’s reach, so she was forced to lean over for it. “I’ll take a refill,” he said. “Natty Ice.”

Shit.

She took the bin back to the bar, pulled his crappy beer, and took it back to him without a word. Screw tips. She wanted to get away from him.

Each table had a little dish of cellophane-wrapped toothpicks. Some attempt at decor. He’d knocked it over, scattering the toothpicks over the floor.

She looked down at them, thinking, _Leave them. Leave them there. Leave -_

“You should pick those up,” he said. “Tripping hazard.”

_They’re toothpicks,_ she thought, but went to get the broom, because in spite of everything she did to squash it down, there was still a clean-freak doctor somewhere inside her.

He’d been hoping she would get down on her hands and knees, probably. She swept, avoiding his eyes, and calculating whether she wanted less to have him staring at her tits or her ass when she bent over to sweep it all into the dustpan.

His gaze on her like was like a film of grease, like the way she felt after closing on a particularly bad Saturday night.

“How much you make here?” he asked her.

She pretended not to hear him.

“I’ve got a friend who hires people like you,” he went on.

Her stomach turned as she tried to work out whether he meant metas or women who clearly made minimum wage plus tips.

“Not for that,” he said. “Not that I’d turn it down if you were offering.”

“I’m not,” she said through her teeth.

“Her name’s Amunet Black, and she has a use for people with, you know. Special qualities.”

Against her will, she glanced up at him, and saw him take his glass eye out, leaving a gaping hole in his head.

Not entirely empty, though. There was something poking out - it was a snake _it was a snake sliding out of his head hissing at her -_

Almost as soon as she registered it, the snake was gone, retreating back into his head, leaving her nailed to the floor, speechless, frozen with terror and disgust.

He grinned at her. “I thought that would cool things down.”

She looked at her hand, and saw that it was frozen to the broom, locked solid by a sheet of ice that extended all the way down the shaft, over the bristles, to the floor. She yanked her hand away and the ice shattered like glass, but the broom still stood upright. She kicked it hard where it froze to the floor, and that shattered too. She caught the ice-crusted broom as it started to fall.

“Cute trick,” she said. She wanted to throw up. She wanted to freeze him solid.

She needed to get away.

He popped the eye back into its socket. “See, I got a job with her too. Lets me do what I want, as long as it’s to people she points me at.”

“The only thing I want to do with my power is get rid of it,” she snarled, and turned her back on him like she’d turned her back on Star Labs, striding across the bar, leaving the mess of ice and toothpicks behind her.

“Maybe she could arrange that,” he called out. “She has a lot of tricks up her sleeve.”

Her march stuttered as she froze mid-step.

“I could introduce you,” he added sing-song.

But no. There was no way. Her mother hadn’t gotten rid of it, Cisco hadn’t gotten rid of it. How could some kind of underworld criminal manage to do what the two most brilliant people in her life had failed at?

She kept walking.

She lurked at the bar for the rest of the night, watching him out of the corner of her eye. Watching for the snake, maybe, or for something else. She didn’t know.

At closing time, he got up, dropped bills on the table, and left. She went to clean up. When she folded the bills to tuck them into her pocket, she felt something thicker than paper in the middle.

She tugged out a beer mat with a phone number and _Norvock_ written on it.

_Ugh._

She hurled it into her busing bin and started cleaning the table. As she pushed his chair back in, her foot slipped on the floor. She caught herself and looked down. Toothpicks, water from the melted ice, grime from the floor. It had smeared everywhere. Just another mess that she’d created.

This one, she at least knew how to clean up.

Tears boiled up in her throat. If she didn’t get Killer Frost under control somehow, she didn’t stand a chance of cleaning up the rest of her messes. Of making amends. Of being worthy of going back to Star Labs and her friends and her own life.

Slowly, slowly, she reached into the bin to pull the beer mat out again.


End file.
